Metamorphosis
by Queenofinsanity
Summary: Set in the interval between 'The Next Doctor' and 'The Dead Planet'. The Doctor follows some strange readings back to Earth, this time to a small college town in Texas, in the year 2011. Once there he meets Alice, who is both problem and solution.


A/N- Yes, it's been absolutely ages since I've put anything up here. I blame a massive case of Writer's Block. Yes, capitalized because it was just that bad. In any case, here you go. My first multichapter fic in years, as well as my first serious foray into the world of Doctor Who fanfiction. Enjoy, and don't forget to review!

The entire situation, Alice decided as she walked into the doctor's office bright and early that Monday morning, was utterly insane. She'd spent her entire life almost unnaturally healthy, it was sure, but that was no reason to expect something to go horribly wrong here. She glanced around her perhaps a bit suspiciously as she walked up to check in.

It was a doctor's office. Calm, a bit sterile perhaps but nothing sinister or bizarre, no matter what her gut told her. And it wasn't even a bad feeling that she was having precisely, just the absolute certainty that something would happen. She'd felt that before, and it had never yet been right. So she should just shut up that inner voice that was yelling for her to take a good look around and relax.

With a deep breath and a shake of her head, that was exactly what she tried to do. She stepped forward to speak to the nurse at the desk with a very stern reminder to act normal. "Hi, I have an appointment at 9:30?"

The woman at the desk barely looked at her. "Name?" She asked, sounding supremely bored.

"Alice Walker." She replied, feeling rather small with the nurse's disinterest.

The woman rolled her eyes. "Name of the DOCTOR you're seeing." she clarified, as if she were explaining it to someone with a mental handicap.

Alice blushed. "I think it was... Smith? I just asked for the earliest appointment."

Another long suffering look from the nurse. "Don't think we even have a Smith here." She replied shortly. She typed something into the computer anyway, and her eyebrows went up. "Apparently we do, but only for today. That's strange."

Alice shrugged. "Hell if I know."

The nurse sighed and typed something into the computer. "Right. Take the clipboard and fill out all the paperwork. We'll be with you shortly."

Alice took the clipboard and groaned at the stack of paper it held. Taking a seat at the far corner of the waiting room, where she was as far away from others as she could get, she pulled out the attached pen and started filling out the ten page questionnaire about herself, her insurance, her medical history, and that of half her extended family.

It was ridiculous, really. Surely this amount of detail would never actually be of any use to anyone? She took great pleasure in skipping half of the form-she'd never met her father and never heard the slightest bit about him or his family from her mother. In general the consensus of the rest of her mother's family was that he'd been a waste of time from the start, and that's all they would say about it.

Mostly it was a source of frustration, but here and now she was grateful to only have five pages worth of paperwork instead of ten.

She finished it quickly and spent a good half hour online via her phone before another nurse came out and called her name. She quickly pocketed the phone and headed through the door the nurse held open for her.

"Just down that hallway and to the left. You're in room 'C', it'll be the third one on the right." The nurse told her before hurrying off in the opposite direction. Great. Alice had a passing thought to call the nurse back and make her show the way, but discarded it as petty. Most likely she had something that needed to get done, otherwise she wouldn't have rushed off. Still, though, when you've got a patient whose primary concern is randomly not being able to walk, you'd think the doctor would spare a nurse to make sure she got to the room safely.

She sighed and headed off. It wasn't really that she expected to have a problem, but some concern would have been nice. The place did look rather busy, she noted as she walked through the hallways. She vaguely remembered something about a holiday for the local university, and indeed most of the patients of the day seemed to be around the right age for that. Perhaps they were just too busy for niceties.

That was about the point where all thought was distracted by the fact that her knee suddenly wasn't holding her up anymore, and that was followed immediately by the all too familiar sensation of falling forward with no way to stop herself.

She was pleasantly surprised when someone rushed out of a nearby doorway to catch her. "Thanks." She replied, irrationally embarrassed. "That would have been less than pleasant." She tested her leg gently and found that it still wasn't quite wanting to hold her weight and she sighed. That figured out, she turned her head to get a glimpse of her rescuer.

Her immediate thought was that he was rather cute, though she suppressed it quickly. He was tall and gangly, with what artfully tousled hair and a wide grin that she couldn't help but return. He was wearing a rather outrageous blue suit under a lab coat. She immediately guessed that he was a doctor, since the nurses all wore scrubs. "Well, I couldn't just let you fall, now could I?" he asked her in a warm, friendly voice. She was rather surprised to note that he had a rather thick British accent, though it did seem to fit him.

She laughed. "I suppose not." she replied, sparing a passing thought to think that it was quite a shame she didn't normally go for men. "But it was still a kindness, and so thanks." She continued flexing her knee as subtly as she could as she spoke, mentally swearing at the continuation of the problem.

"Not a problem at all. Are you going to be able to make it the rest of the way, or do you need a hand?" He shifted his arms so he could hold her up a little less awkwardly, letting her lean on his outstretched arm.

She was grateful for that, as she had been pressed up rather intimately to him. She flexed her knee experimentally and was relieved to find that it seemed to be working normally. "I think I'm alright." She told him, "But thank you." She shifted her weight onto the problematic leg and smiled when it held.

He nodded and continued on his way-which ended up being straight into the room she herself was headed to. She grinned. Perhaps today wouldn't be so bad after all.

She entered the room just behind him, grinning at his surprised look. "Oh, no way." he said, sounding about as delighted as he looked. "You're Alice?"

She nodded and dropped a half bow. "That I am. I take it you're Doctor Smith?"

He smiled. "Funny how these things work out, isn't it?" He waved at the chair nearest the door. "Well, sit down then. Don't want you falling over again."

Alice smiled wryly and sat. "This is true." She handed him the clipboard. "So, Dr. Smith, where do we start?"

He smiled absently at her as he took her chart, flipping through the pages much faster than he ought to be able to read them. "Is this right?" he asked, raising one eyebrow, "You've never been to a doctor before?"

Alice nodded. "Mom didn't like them very much." she told him. "I never got sick, so she never took me. I still don't know how I managed to get by without any of my vaccines, but she pulled it off. Never would tell me why, but she wouldn't hear of me going anywhere near even so much as the school nurse."

He made a note on the chart. "Right then. But now things are acting up. For the first time in your entire life. That's rather unusual in this century, isn't it?"

She blinked. "This century? It's better than all the previous ones. What, are you from the future or something?" She laughed at her own joke, partially because that feeling of something happening was increasingly hard to ignore.

"Or something." He agreed good naturedly. "Oh, but we're all time travelers in a way, it's just that most of us can only go one direction."

Alice raised her eyebrows. "Most of us? As in, not you?"

"Oh, I like you." He said with a grin, "Quick on your feet."

Alice noted that he did not answer the question, and concluded that the answer was probably yes. "So you're a doctor and a time traveler. What brings you here? I doubt that whatever is wrong with me is that interesting."

"Not a doctor, The Doctor. Actually. No Smith. That's just because you humans are so strange about names." He corrected her with a twinkle in his eye. "And yes, it is, actually. Though I didn't realize until just now that it was you."

"You humans?" she repeated, "As in you're not one? You look human to me. You've got a British accent, for bob's sake!" There were too many questions she wanted to ask, her brain was going a mile a minute. "And what do you mean I'm the reason you're here? That's insane! I'm absolutely nothing special."

"I" He said extremely primly, "don't look human, you look Time Lord. We came first, you know. By quite a long time." His eyes softened. "Of course you are. I've never met someone who wasn't special. You, specifically, though, are quite an oddity in this time. And whatever is wrong with you, which I have yet to determine, will probably be equally strange."

Alice's head was spinning. "Time Lord? You've got to be joking. That doesn't even sound like a proper race name. Where are you from, planet Grandfather Clock?" It didn't even occur to her that he might be telling the truth, otherwise she would have been at least somewhat less rude. "Nothing strange about a college drop out working days and writing nights."

His eyes narrowed. "It was called Gallifrey." he told her flatly, "And I'd thank you not to laugh at my entire species. I don't laugh at yours, though I certainly could if I wanted to."

Alice noted with some dismay that 'was'. Unless he was one cool customer, he was telling the truth. No one spoke of losing something that important in such a flat tone unless they really had lost it. "Sorry. I just... it's a lot to take in."

The Doctor looked away. "Of course." He took a moment, but when he turned back to face her, he was smiling as usual. "Back to the matter at hand. You." He reached into a pocket and pulled out a strange silver device that looked rather like a really fancy pen, without the pen part.

"What is that?" Alice asked, glad for a distraction.

He grinned. "Sonic screwdriver." He pulled out a pair of glasses, fiddled with it for a moment, then pressed a button before waving it at her. It made a strange squealing noise that hurt her ears.

"Shit, OW!" she swore, wincing away. "What exactly is a sonic screwdriver-because it can't be what it sounds like, that's just insane-and why are you waving it at me?"

"Oh, relax." He said, examining it as he spoke. "It's like a multitool, but better. And yes, it is a screwdriver. It can also do anything else that can be done by manipulating sound waves. Including do a basic scan of you. Much neater than the bulky machines this time period's got."

Just when she thought her day couldn't get any weirder. "Alright then, what's it say?"

For a moment, his face fell and his eyes grew sadder. It went back to normal so quickly that she couldn't be sure she hadn't just imagined it. "Judging by the readings, I was absolutely right." He glanced back at her, away from the screwdriver. "You're not going to like this."

She rolled her eyes. "Just tell me. You're as mad as a hatter, but for some reason I think I trust you."

He smiled. "Well, thank you." His expression sobered. "You're a Legoon. Well, half Legoon. Probably your father, since it says here you never met him."

"Legume? Like a peanut? What are you talking about?" Alice's eyes narrowed. She thought she saw what he was getting at, and she didn't like it one bit.

He shook his head. "Not Legume. Legoon. L-e-g-o-o-n. They're a lovely people. Come from Legona VI. More or less humanoid, enough to be biologically compatible with humans, anyway. Though generally their children come out like them. I've never seen a half Legoon that could pass for human before. "

"No." Alice said firmly. "No, you are not talking about this. I am not an alien. I'm a human girl from Texas, just an ordinary woman. Nothing fancy, nothing special, just a woman."

"And that's where you're wrong." He said, a look rather uncomfortably like pity in his eyes. "Come on, think about it. Why else would your mum have never taken you to a doctor? Most parents are always worried, take their kids in whether they need it or not. But you? You'd never been to a doctor, and you all of twenty six years old. You're clever, Alice. Don't you think that's strange?"

She opened her mouth to reply, couldn't think of anything to say, shut it again. "Yeah, but an _alien?_ I think I'd notice."

He laughed. "How? You wouldn't be an alien to yourself. To you, being fully human is alien. Just as alien as a Time Lord."

Alice stood then, unable to just sit around and calmly discuss the fact that she belonged to a different species. "No. You can't just waltz in here and tell me that I'm an alien. You just can't. You're absolutely insane. I bet you're not even a real doctor! You're just a madman whose imagination is bigger than his brain."

With that, she turned and bolted. She didn't need to know what was wrong with her that badly. Clearly her mother had been right about doctors' offices. This one was run by lunatics.


End file.
